


Up in Smoke

by violetpeche



Series: Yes I'm Changing [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-17 22:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18107468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetpeche/pseuds/violetpeche
Summary: Taeil’s had a lot of half-baked ideas, but this is by far the most impressive one Kun has seen.





	Up in Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Written for week #1 of [NeoPrompts](https://twitter.com/neoprompts)!. The theme for this week was _" **Zufolo** \- a small flute used to train songbirds."_
> 
> Unbeta'd, but shout out to [pinkwinwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkwinwin/pseuds/pinkwinwin) for letting me word vomit out an idea and for giving me the title!
> 
> Warnings for smoking weed and references to drug paraphernalia. Nothing spicy; just bros smoking up.

Taeil’s had a lot of half-baked ideas, but this is by far the most impressive one Kun has seen.

“How the fuck did you do that?” Kun asks, waving a cloud of smoke from his face. 

He pulls his vape pen from the corner of his mouth and sits up from his slouched positiong of the couch, hand gently resting over a belly full of chicken quesadilla and guacamole. He feels light, warm, and his toes, lips, and fingertips are fuzzing over on the bright Spring day. Kun has a shift at the piano shop in about an hour, give or take, but that doesn't stop him from taking the edge off at Johnny and Taeil’s apartment.

Taeil shrugs. "I was bored." He brings his hand over his mouth to cough and turn away from Kun for a brief moment. Kun remembers Taeil tends to grow bashful whenever he’s embarrassed or proud.

Taeil stands before Kun, his eyes wide with a menacing smile and a halo of the afternoon sun wrapping around his shoulders. Between his forefinger and thumb is a periwinkle ceramic bird whistle - or what _looks_ like a periwinkle ceramic bird whistle. On the top of bird's head rests an orange and yellow glass slide almost twice the size of the bird's head. It looks ridiculous, as if the bird is sporting her best Sunday hat.

Kun shakes his head and can't help peeling out a chuckle. "No way, dude."

Taeil has an impressive collection of home-made bongs, pipes, and other paraphernalia he'd made over the years since he and Kun met each other.

The first time Kun got stoned with Taeil, Taeil pulled out the most majestic looking bong he welded together in a glass blowing class and named it _Al Green_. It was about one foot tall, ribboned with a gradient of seafoam and teal, and he loved it so much, it was always perfectly polished from his weekly Alka Seltzer cleanings. Kun took a couple rips so deep, he was burping for nearly an hour afterword with his head under the kitchen faucet guzzling every drop of water he could manage. His mouth turned into the Sahara, he couldn’t shake it, until he eventually finally passed out on Taeil's couch with his hand in a bowl of M&Ms.

Then there was Taeil's homemade Volcano vaporizer, the bong made from a neon orange construction cone he commandeered from a Taco Bell parking lot, the hookah rigged from an old marinara sauce jar, a frightful garden-gnome-turned-bong.... Kun lost count of how many hair-brained inventions Taeil whipped up ever since he discovered the _r/StonerEngineering_ subreddit. Taeil couldn't help himself from fashioning a smoking device out of almost anything he could get his hands on.

"It's cute, huh?" Taeil asks.

Kun nods. "Have you tried it out yet?"

"Nope. I mostly did it for the novelty."

"Jungwoo would love this."

"Mmm," Taeil nods again, brown hair flopping in front of his eyes. He brushes the strands from his face and steps forward to hand the pipe to Kun. "Hold it?"

Kun tosses his pen onto the coffee table and takes the pipe to let Taeil rummage through his kitchen cabinets for some weed.

Taeil comes back with a mason jar full of green he picked up from Yuta last week and his grinder, and carefully kneels down in front of the coffee table. He swipes his arm across the surface, tossing the pile of paper bags and wrappers on to the floor.

"Come on!" Kun drops to the floor in an attempt to pick up the garbage. The carpet scrunches under his palms, surface rough and scratchy. Or maybe it's only crunched up pile of tortilla chips. He never remembered the floor being this _itchy_ before.

Taeil pays no mind to Kun and works his grinder between his palms.

Kun catches a whiff of the pungent green. It smells sticky, gooey, and Kun's bones melt with delight. He stops on his hands and knees, brain wobbling, and he crumples the corner of a tin foil before giving up and slumping against the side of the couch next to Taeil. He wipes his hands off on the sides of his thighs and lets his head loll onto his shoulder.

"I'm hungry," Taeil says, voice lilting. He packs the slide on the top of the bird's head and digs into his pocket to pull out a lighter.

"We just fucking ate."

"I know, but I'm still hungry." Taeil offers the bird to Kun. "You want to go first?"

Kun takes the bird and lighter, sliding the tip of the tail between his wet lips and placing a finger over the whistle hole. He flicks the lighter and begins to let the smoke curl onto his tongue. He pulls the slide out of the bird and draws in another breath, lungs stretching like a hot air balloon until he feels like he’s about to burst. He rests the makeshift pipe in his lap and tilts his head back onto the cushion of the couch. 

His chest feels warm, it’s rattling between his ribs as soon as he closes his eyes and lets the smoke curl from his lips. It’s so thick, it wets his upper lip, tendrils cling to the tip of his nose, and Kun feels like he’s in heaven. He’s on top of the fucking world, sat on the living room floor of Taeil with his hand smashed into a couple of stray pinto beans on the carpet floor and his head floating in space. He lets the feeling flood over him, soak in, just basque into the full body relaxation Kun rightfully deserved. After all, he has a full evening of tuning baby grands planned ahead of him. Might as well get loosened up.

“Shit,” he moans. Whatever Yuta gave Taeil this week was _nice_.

“So it works,” Taeil says after what feels like a full hour. Kun feels Taeil’s hand gently graze his to take the whistle-pipe and lighter in his hand. Kun hears the soft _kchk_ of the lighter and leans further into the couch.

Kun doesn’t respond, just feels his tongue turn into sandpaper and squints his eyes open to watch light up the bird.

It happens in slow motion – the flicker of the flame wavering over the bowl as Taeil prepares for a hit, but his fingers slip, and the bird falls, no – it somersaults onto the corner of the coffee table. The slide piece catapults onto a spray of paper takeout bags on the floor next to Kun, and a smoldering patch of pot lands on the carpet.

And _then_ Taeil comes into the equation right after it, voice lost and tight in his throat as he scrambles forward.

“No!” Taeil shouts, immediately lunging for the ground up buds by Kun’s knee. He picks at the flecks that have quickly woven their way into the carpet, scavenging for every bit. “Yuta robbed me for this stuff this week. Can't waste it.”

Kun grunts to slouch forward and grab to projectiled slide piece. He offers it to Taeil. “Here you go.”

Taeil packs the bowl with the bits of weed he found off the floor (Kun prays a fragment of tortilla chip isn’t in there) and picks up the bird, but stops to inspect the gaping hole on the top of the bird’s head. His brown hair is mussed up every which way in front of his eyes again, and Kun spots a smudge of brown guacamole crusting up on the front of Taeil’s white fitted t-shirt. Kun’s mouth starts to water thinking about the chicken quesadilla he had 30 minutes ago - or maybe it was an hour? It could have been yesterday, but it was good, and he’d really like another one right now.

Taeil frowns, turning the whistle this way and that, eye squinting inside the tiny ceramic piece and rests it on the coffee table.

“It’s broken,” Taeil says. His voice sounds small and a tad defeated.

There's a faint hairline fracture stemming from the bird’s beak to a wing, and a few chunks of the ceramic missing around the mouthpiece.

Kun wants to be sad for Taeil, he really does, but right now, with the passing of time is at a standstill, the sun filtering through the window is _the_ perfect temperature. He’s feeling so good, and his phone is buzzing in his back pocket (which also feels good), so he brings up his arm that currently feels like a bag of bricks, and slams it down on Taeil’s shoulder.

“Ugh,” is all Kun can offer in condolences at this moment.

Taeil flinches and rests his hand on top of Kun’s - it feels so soft on the top of his hand, like silk, like he stuck his hand in a cold flowing river on a summer day - and slides it off his shoulder.

“Oh well,” Taeil mumbles. He shuffles on his knees closer to the edge of the couch and shoves his hand between two cushions.

Kun wants to ask what Taeil’s doing, why Taeil's eyebrows look so focused with his bottom lip between his teeth, and he’s amazed watching Taeil’s arm getting swallowed up by the couch as soon as it’s elbow-deep, like, _what in the hell is going on?_

Taeil’s face perks up as he excavates his arm out of the couch, unearthing a small bottle. He grimaces and immediately pinches the bottle between his thumb and forefinger.

Kun feels his face start to float away from his body, and suddenly his eyes feel really dry because he has to blink a ridiculous amount of times to focus on what the hell Taeil drops onto the coffee table.

“Uhh… why were you looking for lube?” Kun asks.

“I wasn’t,” Taeil says, shoving his arm back between the couch cushions. “But I _am_ going to kill Johnny.”

Kun slumps down until his head is resting against a cushion, and he closes his eyes. He feels Taeil’s fingers jostling around under his head, until finally, the soft _zip!_ of Taeil’s arm pulls out from the couch again.

“Here you are,” Taeil says. Kun hears plastic crinkling.

Kun squints his eyes open again and watches Taeil tear open a packet with his teeth. He peels the plastic off to the side and bites off half of the treat and starts gnoshing on it furiously.

“What is that?” Kun asks.

Taeil extends an offering. “Backup provisions,” he says carefully around his bite. It looks like a cereal bar, sticky bits of marshmallow gooed up around each morsel. “From one of those shops in Colorado.”

“Dude, that’s gross.”

A ball of cereal bar is wedged up in the side of Taeil's mouth, bulging at his cheek. He's obviously savoring every bit of it in his mouth, chewing loudly and smacking his lips. “What’s gross?” 

“It’s like. Been _in_ your couch. Is it old?”

Taeil scoffs, throwing his hand up to make a _stop_ motion. “It’s in a sealed wrapper and I got it two days ago.”

“Next to your lube.”

“ _Johnny’s_ lube,” Taeil corrects, finger pointing in the air. “I don’t fuck on the couch.”

Kun wrinkles his nose. “I’m never sitting down anywhere in here again.”

He feels his phone buzzing in his pocket again, doesn’t really care to check it, but he dusts his hands off on his knees and pushes himself up from the floor. A paper bag ruffles under his feet and he bends down to crumple the greased-up mess into a ball. Kun could _really_ go for another chicken quesadilla before he starts his shift.

“You sure you don’t want a bite?” Taeil asks.

Kun shakes his head, nose feeling about half a second off from the rest of his movements. “Gotta leave for work.”

Taeil swipes the TV remote off the coffee table and sits down onto the couch, socked feet tucking under himself into the corner. “It won’t kick in for a few hours.” 

“Are you crazy? Last time we had anything from Colorado….”

Taeil lets out a small giggle and Kun tosses the balled up wad of wrappers at Taeil’s chest. 

“I’ll see you later,” Kun says, rolling his eyes.

“Later,” Taeil salutes and gives a quick wink. “Tell Johnny I’m going to kick his ass when he gets home.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was quite the challenge for me, as it should be! I'm not particularly happy with this, but all acts of writing are good for the craft, right? Anyhow... I wanted to write Kunil, especially after seeing that pic of Taeil wearing a [pot leaf charm](https://twitter.com/peachysichengs/status/1104390377342205953?s=20). 
> 
> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/johntographique) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/violetpeche)


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